The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University

We know there was being from eternity, and this being must be intelligent. For how doth one's mind refuse to believe, that there should be being from all eternity without its being conscious to itself that it was; that there should be being from all eternity and yet nothing know, all that while, that anything is. This is really a contradiction; we may see it to be so, though we know not how to express it. For in what respect has anything had a being, when there is nothing conscious of its being? For in what respect has anything a being, that angels, nor men, nor no created intelligence know nothing [of], but only as God knows it to be? Not at all more than there is sound where none hears it, or color where none sees it. Thus for instance, supposing a room in which none is, none sees the things in the room, no created intelligence: the things in the room have no being any other way than only as God is conscious [of them]; for there is no color there, neither is there any sound, nor any shape, etc.The arguments from color, sound, and the furniture in an unoccupied room recur, considerably elaborated, in the second stratum of "Being," and the case of the unoccupied room also appears in "The Mind," no. 40 (Works, 6, 204–06, 356–58).